No one can grow mentally, who has not time to read or to think, and whose life is a constant struggle to get enough food and clothing for himself and his family. Our working-people have their intellectual freedom, as well as the wage-question, to fight for, just as the ancestors of the early factory-operatives fought for their social and constitutional liberty. They will carry on the warfare in their own way; and if employers are wise they will try to do something practical to prevent strikes, riots, and labor-unions, which are the working-man’s weapons of defence, and so to “lock the door before the horse is stolen.” Not long ago I was invited to speak to a company of the Lowell mill-girls, and to tell them something about my early life as a member of the guild. I was doubly willing to do this, as I was desirous of forming some estimate of the status of these successors of the early mill-girls. About two hundred of them assembled in the pleasant parlors of the People’s Club, and listened attentively to my story. When it was over, a few of them gathered around, and asked me many questions. In turn I questioned them,--about their work, their hours of labor, their wages, and their means of improvement. When I urged them to occupy their spare time in reading and study, they seemed to understand the necessity of it, but answered sadly: “We will try; but we work so hard, we tend so much machinery, and we are so tired.” It was plainly to be seen that these operatives did not go to their labor with the jubilant feeling that the old mill-girls used to have; that their work was drudgery, done without aim and purpose; that they took little interest in it beyond the thought that it was the means of earning their daily bread. There was a tired hopelessness about them that I am sure was not often seen among the early mill-girls, and they had an underfed, prematurely old look. The hours of labor are now less, it is true; but the operatives are obliged to do a far greater amount of work in a given time. They tend so many looms and frames that they have no time to think. They are always on the jump; and so have no opportunity to improve themselves. They are too weary to read good books, and too overworked to digest what they have read. The souls of many of these mill-girls seemed starved, and looked from their hungry eyes as if searching for mental food. Why are they not fed? The means of education are not wanting. Public libraries are provided, and they have more leisure to read than the mill-girls of forty years ago. But they do not seem to know how to improve it. Their leisure only gives them the more time to be idle in; more time to waste in the streets, or in reading cheap novels and stories. It might almost be said that they are worse off than if they had longer hours, or did not know how to read, unless they can use to better advantage their extra time, or have the means of suitable education provided for them.